Quote:
Originally Posted by Kali Yuga
They sent out 822,000 email warnings.
They sent out 68,000 second-stage warnings.
They sent out 165 third-stage warnings.
Only fraction of those 165 third-stage warnings appear to be going to court, where the individual might face a €1500 fine and/or lose Internet for 1 month. Or, if they can demonstrate that it's not their fault, they are not punished.
That doesn't sound like a horrendous cost to me, especially compared to a maximum of $20,000 per-download fine that you could face in the US.
|
Those 68,000 second stage warnings are sent by registered mail (
recommandé avec accusé de réception in France) which cost a minimum of Euro4.36 or US$5.77.
So the French taxpayer is paying a minimum of US$392.360 just in postage costs to protect the profits of private corporations, quite apart from administrative, legal and salary costs incurred by Hadopi*. At the most they seem to be likely to recover 165x1500 Euros, or E247,500 equal to US$327,538. Which means even if every existing case is won they won't even cover their postage costs!
There's a reason both of the main opposition parties in next years French elections are committed to abolishing Hadopi. And according to current opinion Sarkozy is going to lose to one of them.
That is exactly what ACTA, SOPA/PIPA and C11 in Canada are designed to do - transfer the costs for protecting corporate profits from the corporate budget to the public budget.
Edit: *According to the NYT article Hadopi has a budget of Euro11Million.
Edit2: I'm sure it would be far too cynical of me to think that
this has anything to do with why Sarkozy brought in Hadopi.